Page 90 of The Shadowed Oracle (The Bonded Worlds #1)

Show me his face! she begged. Then let me go back! Send me back to Dean!

He was waiting for her, no doubt worried. The visions only registered as a second or two in the perspective of those around her, but this time, before this vision took hold, she had heard Dean’s plea. Heard him calling her name in a panic.

Send me back! she asked again.

No answer. The only change was the car’s headlights flashing on. The engine of the hooded killer’s car came roaring alive, the strong smell of gasoline hot on Ingrid’s nostrils. She braced herself, expecting to be yanked away into the next location. But the vision was not over.

One piece was missing.

Kyle Twyker, dressed in the same outfit she’d last seen him in, was storming out of the restaurant and into the parking lot. He cursed and muttered all the way to his car, then peeled off in a hurry.

Her stalker followed.

Within seconds, so did Ingrid.

She was lifted rather than dragged this time.

A subtle nudge sending her upward. High into the sky until she was at a bird’s eye view of the city.

She drifted through clouds and floated over tree tops, descending at a slight angle, feeling nothing but the visceral sensation of total suspension, like she was only a set of eyes now.

Her vision led her like wings. She flew over tall trees and taller buildings Downtown. She flew effortlessly over Earth, over her hometown and just beyond it. It was almost enjoyable, nearly real. But when she made her last descent, arriving at her destination, the thrill of it quickly wore off.

She found herself in front of a run-down apartment building by the airport. The gate surrounding the ten-story structure was dented, open only on one side. She glided through, still riding her power, then halted as if the magic pulling the strings wanted her to recognize where they were.

It was the same point of view she’d seen on the news.

Kyle Twyker’s apartment building.

It clicked. Ingrid understood. And the magic was satisfied.

Suddenly, she was levitating again, jumping from place to place in a discordant flurry. The methods of her travel became spotty, dizzying, and she was again standing next to the boxy old car of her stalker.

A streetlight above flickered on and off.

The hooded man emerged, moving with lightning speed and clutching the knife in plain view.

He was in such a hurry that he’d left his door flung wide open.

Ingrid still hadn’t seen the face of the male, but now she could get a look at that computer.

She mentally took a step forward, testing the hold of the magic.

It worked. For whatever reason, her power had given her free rein now, allowing her to sit in the passenger side seat and stare at the screen.

She didn’t have to look long to recognize the images plastered on it. They were camera feeds. Four of them, sectioned to fit the screen. It was no surprise what they revealed, yet the evidence presented to her in that manner was a shock, chilling her to the bone.

The first camera was planted in her apartment. A wide lens fixed on her doorway and capturing every square inch of her living room.

The second was of her hallway, outside her front door.

The third was located in The Boneyard, aimed directly over the bar she spent every night behind.

And the fourth… the fourth was at Dean’s cabin.

The night vision on the lens made it hard to discern at first. The camera was planted on the porch or maybe the front door, grainy and fixed on the dark woods.

But when Ingrid looked closer, she saw the easily identifiable road leading to Dean’s six- foot metal gate in the distance, and the easily recognized design in the very center.

A large cursive C , for his surname, Crassus, welded to both sides of the barrier.

Ingrid’s skin turned deathly cold.

Puzzle pieces appeared and dispersed, floating at the very front of her mind. The weightlessness she’d been experiencing turned into a nauseating buoyancy, fluttering in the air like ash in the wind.

The magic took back control.

She could not move of her own accord.

Take me back, she whispered.

I don’t want to see any more.

Please, just take me back.

Her power didn’t abide. Didn’t give in. Wouldn’t let her flee. She was at the whim of whatever it was that put her there—stuck in a nightmare worse than any she’d experienced.

A sob welled in her. She writhed and kicked with phantom limbs. Begging again and again to be taken back. Back to the way it was before. Before she knew.

Then a scream sounded off in the distance.

Ingrid didn’t need to search for the origin of it. Those puzzle pieces still hung in front of her.

The screams. The neighbors had complained about the screams. About the noise. About the shrill shrieks Kyle had let out as he was being robbed of his life.

She remembered that. She remembered everything now, all at once. Remembered it all so vividly that there was no room for doubt. No holes to fill in. No alternative conclusions. As desperately as she wanted it to be a lie, she had to stare it in the face and call it what it was. The truth.

Her heart turned to stone.

Her eyes burned.

And she no longer fought the vision.

She watched as the hooded man fled back to his car, thudding into the driver’s seat mere inches from her. She looked at him like a stranger, but he was no stranger.

The hood came off, along with the rest of the blood-soaked jacket, and Dean Crassus sped off into the night, his face splattered in blood. Kyle’s blood. The filthy evidence of the life he’d just ended.

Sitting behind that wheel, utterly impassive, Dean was unrecognizable from the warm and valiant male she had just left behind in the present.

If she’d been in her body, she would’ve collapsed.

Why? she asked him. How?

Her vision shifted.

How could you murder Karis?

She was directly in front of him, peering into his dark irises.

Why did you lie to me?

Their surroundings faded, shadows infecting everything but those cold eyes looking through her.

Why Dean?!

Dean!

WHY!?

“WHY!?”

And then she was back in the present.

Back in her body.

Laid bare over the covers of her bed, staring at those same eyes, only worlds apart.